Disabling That Annoying Windows Automatic Restart Nag Screen

While I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to make sure our computers are safe and secure by encouraging people to use their automatic update features, it does have one hugely annoying and potentially dangerous aspect: automatic restart.

After some updates which it downloads and installs for you, it will then pop-up a message to say that you need to restart your computer for the updates to take effect, and you have two choice – restart now or restart later:

There are two problems with this.

The first is relatively minor, but it’s all too easy to click on the Restart Now button when you meant to click on the Restart Later button.

I know – RTFS (if you’ve come across the popular term RTFM then you’ll be able to work out what this means), but as this nag pops up when you’re probably focused on doing something else (e.g. work, playing games), then it’s still too easy to do.

The second is much more dangerous – you may have wandered off from your computer for a while (e.g. to eat, sleep, or other natural functions), and are not there to respond to the nag.

Now, if you’ve gone off and not saved the latest changes to your Word document, then shame on you – I’ve no sympathy.

But what if, like me, you run data back-ups every day (as indeed you should do)? Then having Windows restart your machine in the middle of that back-up job is plain inconvenient and inconsiderate, because you have to start it all over again.

I choose to back-up my Outlook Express files overnight because this particular job takes about two and a half hours, and with it being the quietest time of the day from a business perspective (we offer 24 x 7 phone support to our customers), then it’s the obvious time to do this necessary housekeeping.

Or supposing you’ve started, or scheduled, a massive download, and then you find that Windows has kindly rebooted your machine for you right when it got to 99% complete?

P*ssed off wouldn’t even begin to describe how you’d feel!

So, fed up with the nag screen, I went on a hunt for a solution, and found two things that may be of interest to you.

Firstly, I found a video, although it appears as though it’s aimed at Windows Vista users only:

Secondly, I found a very helpful post on Technize.com, that provides instructions that work for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, with both termporary and permanent methods for solving the problem.

Tags: dangerous aspect, outlook express, two and a half hours, playing games

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